


Even At The End Of The World

by listerinezero



Series: the new timeline [2]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Fix-It, Future Fic, M/M, Mansion Fic, Mutant Husbands, old dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 08:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1738460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/listerinezero/pseuds/listerinezero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik's quiet morning is interrupted by a visitor from the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even At The End Of The World

Erik sat back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. At 8:30am, it was still early yet - the first bell had only just rung, and teenage students were running through the halls past his office, late to class - but Erik had been up since dawn. He'd done his morning meditation, then walked his usual, well-worn course around the property. By the time he'd showered, shaved, and returned to the bedroom, Charles was awake and ready for them to go down to breakfast together. When he'd first come back to the school, he'd hated days like this, when he felt like he was only biding his time between battles. But as he'd gotten older, he'd come to appreciate that these were the days he was fighting for - not just for future generations, but for himself as well.

Now he sat back and sipped his coffee while lazily weaving his wedding ring between his fingers. Fifty years ago he'd done the same thing with Shaw's coin. Now it was a symbol of love that he worried on in his quiet moments, and instead of revenge, he was thinking about a forgotten plot of land at the far end of the property. Though he'd been running past it nearly every day for thirty years, (these days he mostly walked, to spare his aching knees,) today it caught his eye. It was ignored by the gardeners, yet it received full sun and seemed to have good soil. Perhaps he might start a garden.

He'd mentioned the idea of gardening to Charles around this time last year, when they were just beginning to feel like they could rely on warm days ahead, and the morning sun washed their bedroom in golden light. It had made Charles laugh: the image of Erik in a floppy hat and overalls, carrying pruning shears and yelling at tomato plants. He'd meant to follow up on it, but they'd quickly become busy with other things, and the season had passed. This year, Erik thought he might give it a go.

He'd just put on his reading glasses and begun to search for gardening tips on the internet when his desk phone rang. The display read CHARLES XAVIER.

"Oh, for God's sake," he muttered and rolled his eyes, and instead of answering, he hung up the phone and walked the twenty-five steps from his desk, out into the hallway, to the very next door.

“You know I hate it when you call me from ten feet away,” he said as he stepped inside Charles' office. “I’m just one room over. It’s absurd.”

“Yes, my darling, but it's only polite,” said Charles. “What do you expect me to do? Shout? Throw something against the wall? Send a little _ring ring_ to you telepathically?”

Erik rolled his eyes again, this time so that Charles could see, but Charles ignored it. Erik looked to Logan for a reaction, since he was standing there in Charles' office as well, but he apparently didn't see the humor. 

"I need someone to cover Logan's history class," Charles said. "Are you free? If not, I believe Scott is available, but we both know that history is not exactly his forte."

"No, no. I'll do it," he said. He was going to say something sarcastic about Scott's teaching abilities, but instead he found himself distracted by the glare Logan was shooting him. "What?"

Logan recoiled at the eye contact and turned to Charles. "What the hell is he doing here?" he asked, pointing at Erik.

"Where the hell else would I be?" he asked. "I live here."

"The fuck you do!" Logan spit.

Charles held up his hands and said, "All right, all right," as if a fight were about to break out. "Erik, you'll have to forgive Logan. He's not himself this morning. Logan, yes, Erik has been here with us for many years now."

"What's this all about?" Erik asked, trying not to stare at the way Logan's nostrils were flaring at him.

"Do you remember our visit from Logan in 1973?" Charles asked. Erik nodded. "Well, he's just gotten back."

"Ah." Erik took a good look at Logan over the tops of his reading glasses. "Welcome to the future."

Logan appeared ready to strike. "Yeah, no thanks to you, bub. Thanks for drowning me."

"That was a long time ago, Logan," Charles interrupted, to which Logan growled, "Maybe for you!"

Erik crossed his arms over his chest. “I am sorry about that," he said, not sounding nearly as contrite as he should have. He may have even smirked. "But don’t worry, you’ve gotten your revenge." About five years later, Wolverine had happened upon a temporarily depowered Magneto and attempted to shred him like a cabbage. "I’d be happy to show you the scars if you’d like," he offered. "Not sure you want me to take my pants off right now, but maybe later tonight…”

“All right, that’s quite enough,” Charles said, signaling Erik to stop.

Logan didn't seem impressed by Erik's apology. “You can’t be serious,” he said to Charles. “You trust this guy? After everything he’s done?”

“Of course I trust him,” Charles said.

Logan then turned to Magneto with a snort. “And you teach what? Terrorist tactics for beginners?”

That actually made Erik smile. "We call it mutant combat strategy, and yes, I do.”

“Erik also teaches French, German, and meditation,” Charles added.

“Meditation?” Logan looked back and forth between two of them, as if waiting for the punch line, but none came. “Since when do you meditate?”

“I was in solitary confinement for almost a decade. What did you think I was doing?”

“I don’t know – push-ups and thinking up more ways to kill people?”

At that, Erik let out a laugh, and when Charles shot him a dirty look, he shrugged. “What? He’s not wrong.”

Charles shook his head. “Erik, why don’t you go and prepare for Logan’s class while I get him caught up on the last few years?”

“Are you sure I can’t stay and help with that?” he asked. "That sounds much more interesting.”

The look Charles gave him was the same one he gave to students who tried to tell him that the Danger Room ate their homework. _Erik, you are making this far more difficult than it has to be._

With no further argument, Erik left Charles to handle the time-displaced Wolverine and went to look for Logan's lesson plans for the day. Teachers at the Xavier Academy had an unfortunate tendency to be kidnapped, maimed, trapped in a parallel dimension, or otherwise unable to teach their scheduled classes, and so Charles had a very strict policy about keeping lesson plans up to date and easily accessible to whomever may have to fill in at the last moment. Logan's plans for the day were filed appropriately and, luckily for Erik, Charles had apparently not reviewed them before he'd asked Erik to step in.

The lesson for the day was, ironically enough, about the mutant rights movement's third confrontation with Trask Industries: the one in which Magneto had been captured and depowered, leading to the bloody encounter with Wolverine which left him with three parallel scars across the backs of his thighs. Normally Erik was not allowed to teach any mutant history prior to 1987, but then, he always said it would be good for the students to hear the other side of the story.

He didn't catch up with Charles until later in the afternoon, during a brief window in Charles' schedule between a call with the school's financial manager and his course on mutant ethics. While Erik had been quietly slowing his schedule down over the past few years, Charles was working as hard as ever, and scoffed whenever Erik brought up retirement. He insisted that they weren't _that_ old, not yet. Not as old as they were when he saw their future through Logan all those years ago, and even those future versions of themselves were still out on the battlefield.

They were that old, though. This was the year - the day, even - that Charles had glimpsed. Erik could remember the first time Charles had told him about the vision he'd had of themselves in the future, and how stunned he was by how old they'd been. In hindsight, Erik could only think of how young they were to be so horrified by a future of baldness and wrinkles. Today he was thankful for those wrinkles, and for that bald head. It meant that they were still here.

"So how is Logan adjusting to this brave new world?" he asked as he sat down in front of Charles' desk.

"You know, I almost wish I had asked you to stay, if only so you could have seen the look on his face when I told him we were married."

"Ha!"

"Priceless," Charles said. "Second only to the face he made when he realized that the versions of us that he knew in his future were together as well."

"Were we?"

"Of course we were. I knew the moment I touched my older self's mind." There was a bit of a twinkle in his eye. Erik was sure he had much the same expression on his face, knowing that in every future, in every possibility, their roads always led back to each other. "It was nice to have it confirmed by Logan, though. He said he had been wondering why we insisted on keeping the same sleeping hours."

Bed times and morning alarms were a constant argument for them, since Charles was a night owl and Erik liked to be up with the sun. 

"Even at the end of the world, I'm sure I was trying to get you to sleep on time," he said with a smile.

Even at the end of the world, even when their friends and family were being annihilated, even when everything they'd built was crumbling down around them. Even then, they had each other. Erik believed it. It was the only thing Erik believed in some days.

Charles moved his chair out from behind the desk. "I'd better get to class," he said. "I can feel Logan coming down the hall to meet me. He's going to be shadowing me for the next day or so, until he gets re-acclimated."

Logan was, indeed, coming down the hall. Erik could sense his skeleton approaching. But he waited until Logan was just stepping into the room to lean down and give Charles a big kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Big big thank you to turtletotem and jabletown for reading this over and giving me notes. Hope you both like it!


End file.
